


Heart Like a Gallows

by IntoTheRiverStyx



Series: Changing of the Guard [2]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Angst, Post-Battle of Camlann, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25966624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntoTheRiverStyx/pseuds/IntoTheRiverStyx
Summary: The battle of Camlann has ended, but a war for humanity's existence has taken its place.Scattered and wholly unprepared, Camelot's small handful of survivors forage their own way forward, their Knights' Oaths driving them in a world that wants to kill them much faster than usual.Sometimes, it is the rage sorrow gives way to that defines who you become.
Relationships: Agrivane/Laurel, Bedivere/Kay (Arthurian), Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac
Series: Changing of the Guard [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874362
Kudos: 4





	Heart Like a Gallows

Lancelot fell off his horse with a thud that caused Guinevere's soul to drop to her stomach and her stomach to drop into the earth itself.

“Lance?” she was off her mount and by the Champion in the blink of an eye. The Champion was on his side, curled in on himself. His horse, at least, had stopped when it felt its rider's weight disappeared.

Lancelot let out a sob and Guinevere knew it was not from the fall.

The man they both loved to the ends of the earth would never see them again.

–

Bedivere picked up the King he had considered a brother from a time before either of them were old enough to form lasting memories like he weighed nothing. 

He could not help the glare he gave the Lady of the Lake and the King's last remaining half-sister; they promised to care for him, to restore him to his greatest and release him again when the world needed him.

_Why doesn't the world need him now?_ Bedivere wanted to demand.

As he handed over the body his lifetime friend and Once-King, his heart broke three times over: once for Arthur's brother, Kay, once for the lands dependent on Arthur's ruling, and one last time for entirely selfish reasons.

He knew, though, that this was not a time for sorrow. There was still work to be done, still duties to be carried out.

He turned to the battlefield. 

–

Kay was going to die.

Not as an abstract.

He was, in the very near future, going to die.

The ground far too close to his feet had split open, a black smoke that smelled worse than the communal funeral pyre he was preparing the only hint that a surge of fire too hot for even his magics to shield him from was about to happen.

He ran.

He silenced the feelings of cowardice telling him to turn around, to fight, to face his death like a soldier later by letting the fear that had flooded every bit of him drive him further and further from what could only be the hell the monks had tried to warn him about coming to this world.

–

Bedivere had felt the ground beneath him shake before he'd seen the wall of impossibly dark smoke block the horizon. His heart dropped as he realized Kay was still out there.

He ran to the side of the castle closest to the battlefield where he was met by a few soldiers who could stand despite their injuries.

“What happened?” Bedivere demanded, every bit of him still Arthur's War Marshall.

“We don't know!” a young man who had likely still be called a boy this time last year was the only one to answer him, “The world trembled and the smoke rose up and then there was fire!”

Bedivere had missed the fire while he was running. Looking at the horizon, there seemed to be no fire in sight.

There was, however, a scattering of far-off silhouettes in the sky that belonged to no creature Bedivere had seen before.

_Monsters._

The thought struck him as one equally likely to be madness as it was truth.

“Everybody who can stand, gather the horses and help those who can ride onto them!” Bedivere ordered, “If you can walk, walk. Head away from the smoke and help those who cannot walk on their own as much as you can! I don't care if you have to get everyone on horse-drawn carts, get **out of here.** ”

And, like he was still Arthur's War Marshall, everyone listened.

–

Where Kay had been standing just far enough for them both to carry out what would have been the archer's duties had any archers been left after the mutual slaughter that was the Battle at Camlann, there now was a curtain of smoke too thick to be a natural fire.

Bors gripped his executioner's axe, dug his feet into the ground so wet with blood it might as well have rained, and held himself at the ready for whatever was about to happen.

–

Exhausted from battle, Caradoc did what he thought he could not.

He ran.

Still in his bloodied armor, he sprinted towards where he knew the nearest village was. If he was lucky, if he might be able to warn them death itself was on its way in the form of otherworldly beasts.

He knew, somewhere in his mind not flooded with terror, that they would not believe him until it was too late.

He would not let that stop him from doing what he felt he needed to do, though.

–

Nobody on either side of the battle knew Palamedes had fought at Camlann.

Some weeks before, he had found the only reason he'd stayed at Camelot and become a Knight dead, forgotten in a ditch with a careless knife bearing the heraldry of one of the King's on kin still buried in his stomach. There had been countless other wounds that would have killed him on their own. The stomach wound seemed almost mocking.

To charge a King's own blood with such a heinous act would require more proof than a knife that could be written off as stolen.

He had been unable to gather the proof before the winds of rumor brought news of war, of the men of Orkney coming to end the peace Camelot had wrought on the world.

He discarded his own shield and armor and borrowed some from Camelot's training armory so he could have the chance to enact revenge under the cover of battle.

He hadn't; Agrivane was tucked away, still up North, the man too much a coward to lead as a King.

He shouldn't have been surprised.

He had not managed to slip away – battle cannot provide that type of cover – but when the cries that the King was dead began to lift and the few survivors on either side dropped their arms and began to retreat, he left them to whatever fates their gods saw fit.

By the time he heard of the creatures emerging from the slaughter, it was too late to run.

He'd managed to return to the Inn he had been staying for his things, but he ran out into the town with only his sword and a prayer that he might live long enough to see the town safe. There was no noble urge driving the prayer; he knew if he ran away when those who did not know how to fight tried to defend their families he would never forgive himself.

It was as close to selfish as he could let himself be.

The monsters seemed to be cloaked in fire as they ran. A few resembled animal he knew, but their forms were all wrong even without the fire.

They seemed more interested in getting as far away from the direction they'd come; very few stopped or slowed as they, along with the people and animals of the town, ran in the general direction of _not the one these things came from._

Still, he would stay until the stampede stopped.

After that? He'd figure himself out.

–

When Bedivere had ordered those who could walk to help evacuate the grounds – he knew that was thee next logical step – Dagonet had done what he could. He could walk, could help strip those who could not of their armor so they could be lifted into carts, could ensure carts and horses would not separate as they crossed cobblestones and roots.

When Bedivere had ordered _everyone_ to leave, he refused.

“Where am I to go?” he demanded an answer, “Camelot is my **home!** ”

When the War Marshall's command had left the man and his humanity returned, he nodded.

“I cannot promise we will be _able to_ stay at Camelot,” Bedivere said, “Those critters seem content to run the other direction, but if they change their mind, there's just three of us.”

The third of them, Sir Kay, had returned from the epicenter against all odds. He was pale, his face pale and his breaths were heaving things. The Seneschal had not spoken since he'd nearly crashed into Bedivere at the outermost walls on Camelot; no words had been needed to convey the horrors that were coming.

“And what, are we supposed to just -” Dagonet had meant to finish that argument with _let them take over Camelot,_ when a deafening roar had drowned out even his own thoughts.

“Dragon,” Kay managed, eyes wide and face pointed at the sky, “Dragons are real.”

Dagonet recalled Uther telling him of how Merlin had the ability to know where dragons were, knew how to soothe the dragons' anger or at the very least circumnavigate it.

Perhaps that was why Camelot had built where it was rather than on the never-plowed field that was Camlann.

_This is no time for such fancies,_ Dagonet chided himself, 

“Dagonet,” Bedivere was a War Marshall again, “I need you to see if there are any horses remaining and if there are, take one and ride out to evacuate as many villages as you can!”

Dagonet wanted to argue, wanted to know why Bedivere did not ask the same of Kay when he saw Kay come alight with a fire that did not burn him and he understood: Kay was going to take on the dragon and Bedivere was not going to leave Kay until one of them met death itself.

With a grunt and a nod, Dagonet set off to see if there were any mounts left to grant him a speed he could not maintain on his own.

–

Bors swung his axe and it sank into what he assumed was the monster's rib cage with a squelching sound. Like the others he had managed to fell, sparks and fire and a tar-like liquid oozed from where one might expect blood to flow.

He removed the axe with a pained grunt; he was losing strength and they kept pouring forward from the riven earth with no signs of stopping.

Another one lunged at him, about the same size and shape of the one he had just cut down. He wondered, distantly, if it was seeking revenge for a slain family member.

He heard the sound of bone crunch too far away to be his own. He swung his axe once more and looked in the direction of the crunch. Something was _eating_ one of the dead, armor and all.

A rage even deeper than what he was already feeling took hold.

He roared, the ground under his feet shaking again. This time, though, there was no second tear in the ground, no new source of monsters. He felt something wrap around his feet - _vines,_ his mind supplied, felt his energy surge back into his body. 

He loosed a battle cry and swung like he'd just entered battle, the earth itself seeming to feed him what he needed to make it clear if the monsters kept targeting him as they made their exodus into a world that was not theirs, it would only be Bors standing in the end.

–

It had been a bad idea when Guinevere had first proposed it, and it was an even worse idea now that they were standing at the gates of Orkney castle.

“Name and purpose,” the lone guard who showed his face snapped at them.

“Damn the names,” Lancelot snapped, “there are DRAGONS on the way!”

The guard doubled over laughing, his disbelief not something he though necessary to hide.

“We hail from Camelot,” Guinevere's voice was firm, furious, “And will have an audience with your regent.”

All the humor seemed to vanish from the guard. Three guards who had not shown themselves ran towards the castle as fast as their feet would carry them. The look Lancelot gave Guinevere was a worried one.

They waited in silence, the blood gone from from his face and bravado gone from his soul.

A woman perhaps ten years Guinevere's younger came to meet them at the gate.

“Are you daft?” the woman snapped at the guard, “Open the gates and let the Queen of Camelot in!”

Lancelot had never seen the woman in his life, and judging by the look on Guinevere's face, nor had she. Still, she recovered first and waited for the gates to be drawn open such that they could both enter without having to duck.

The gates drawn from the top, Lancelot thought, were the most dangerous; even if you were letting a friend in, the chain may give way or the person holding the drawstring may lose his grip.

He encouraged Guinevere to cross first with a hand to the small of her back. She was no more eager than he to linger under such a contraption.

“Queen Laurel,” Lancelot took a guess, “it's a pleasure to meet you.”

The stranger with the power to open the castle gates laughed, “You must be Lancelot.”

Lancelot nodded.

“Agrivane is in the throne room,” she told them, “I can't say we were expecting anyone – nonetheless you two – given, well...” she trailed off, the mirth she'd managed to gather together vanished.

Lancelot walked behind the two Queens, resisting the urge to put a hand on his sword. Still, the guards they passed did not try to stop them so either they did not know how to react or did not know who Queen Laurel was escorting.

Still, he could not stop himself from the heavy sigh that did nothing for the knot settling in his stomach.

–

When Agrivane saw his wife – no, his _Queen_ – enter with the Queen and Champion of Camelot behind her, his first instinct was to do as Lamorak had done: jump out the nearest window with no regard to how far it was to the ground.

Be it divine will or his old fear-based habit of staying so still he might be passed over, he stayed seated on what should have been Gawain's throne.

“They say dragons are on their way here,” his wife announced, “Do we have any defenses?”

“What?” Agrivane had hoped something more befitting a regent would have fallen out of his mouth, “And you believe them?”

“We are at war with them last we heard from anyone Mordred took with him,” Laurel – that was her name – pointed out, “If they traveled all the way to our gates without an army to deliver a warning, I am willing to bet it's not a ruse.”

Agrivane bit the inside of his cheek to avoid saying anything before he considered her words more than in passing.

As much as he'd resented being forced to marry her – had resented _her_ in the beginning – she had already proven to have a good head on her shoulders and an even temper. She had, clearly, not been raised by people who valued a level head and even temper.

Before he could corner a coherent thought to spit out before it had the chance to escape, a soldier decked in Orkney heraldry rushed in followed by a small handful of guards.

“Sir, we -” one of the guards tried to say something.

“DRAGONS!” the soldier bellowed, “Dragons sighted at port!”

Agrivane locked eyes with the Champion of Camelot, whose too-blue eyes seemed to say, _We told you so._

–

The call to battle surged through his veins. It was a different type of magic than his own; while his had been given to him by elder gods who saw in him someone who would guard his forests so long as the trees stood, this was someone wounded calling for a final rally.

He let this new magic pull him to its source, let it guide him to where ever it was he was needed.

He felt his fellow gods before he saw them, dozens upon dozens feeling just as compelled to show up and just as confused as to who it was calling them.

This was a room of wood and stone, a man-made place meant for holding people instead of housing them. It was made by men, not gods, and yet...here everyone was.

“Aren't you the guy whose head Gawain cut off?” a voice he felt he should recognize asked him.

_Ah yes,_ he realized, _Fair Camelot's Queen._

They were not in Camelot, though. No, this place was newer, its foundation one of man's need for power than the Druid's need to keep the doors between world sealed.

There was the beginning of a wave of anger, gods about to demand who had called them, who had the power to bend the gods to their will. Before it could amount to anything, a screech he'd never wanted to hear in any form than through the memories of the restless dead filled the air.

Dragons.

There was an exodus through the nearest window; there was no time to traverse more traditional hallways. Bertilak spared a glance at the throne on his way out and saw someone who looked too like Gawain for his head to stay clear.

Outside, there was rain and wind and lightning and swarms of fair folk come to feast on the flesh and bones of the dragons who thought this place one worth destroying.

Bertilak knew dragons, once they found themselves in a world that was not their own, only went for places of power: castles where the leader held true power, houses of worship with priests more connected to the roots of the world tree than they knew, and people too proud for sense who thought dragon eggs might fetch a nice price at the markets.

This was likely the former, though which of Gawain's brother held such a power was beyond him.

Regardless, these dragons were facing gods now.

These dragons would fall.

–

When the last of the dragons who did not have the sense to retreat fell from the sky and the fair folk swarmed the carcass, Bertilak scaled the castle wall to return to the room he'd been summoned to.

He was the only god to do so. Camelot's Queen and Champion – he recognized them from when Gawain had thought the Champion shared blood with The Morrigan – followed him, the Queen making quick work of the maneuver despite clutching one hand against her abdomen.

He felt the rest of the gods leave, most of them at once and then a trickle as if they were debating leaving.

_Wishful thinking,_ Bertilak banished the thought. He would be the only one to stay and offer this world any protection. He knew this.

Back in what he realized was the throne room, Orkney's King was collapsed on the floor. From the window, there were no outward signs he lived. If not for the fact he could sense the life still flowing through the man, he would have thought him dead.

“Agrivane,” a woman Bertilak did not recognize shook the King's shoulder gently, “Agrivane, please.”

“He's alive,” Bertilak told her, “Barely, but alive. What happened.”

“Dragons,” the woman did not look up from this man she clearly cared about much beyond him being her King, “They came to warn us, but...” she swallowed what was likely a sob and offered no more words.”

“Arthur is dead,” Lancelot said it aloud, “and Dragons are here.”

_Likely connected,_ Bertilak thought it wise not to say it aloud; even if it was true, no good would come of it. If anything, it would only add to the fear that was already a tangible thing.

Bertilak chewed on his lower lip as he considered what he knew.

First and foremost, he knew it had to be Agrivane, Gawain's second-oldest brother, who called the gods to defend his Kingdom. If Agrivane was capable of this, Gawain was dead. If Gawain was alive, no magic in the world would allow Agrivane to assume keeper of Orkney as he just had.

Second, Camelot's Champion and Queen had battled alongside the gods. They had not hidden, had not shied away from what could have easily killed them. Even for a Kingdom at war with theirs – Gawain had told him he was going to fight for Camelot when his brothers' armies came from the north – they had rallied alongside strange gods.

Finally, Agrivane had nearly given all he had to offer to protect his home. Despite the oft-unvoiced concerns Bertilak had over Agrivane's character, he was loyal to his home.

Staying as long as he was needed, as long as dragons might return, was not a choice as far as he was concerned. It was needed.

For Gawain's memory, he would stay.

–

Agrivane's recovery was a drawn-out thing, and a few weeks after the gods had driven the dragons away it was clear he would never regain his strength, especially in his arms and legs.

Lancelot had, despite his anger at Agrivane allowing Mordred to co-opt Orkney's armies to wage war against his own father, done as much as he could to aid in Agrivane's recovery.

Laurel – he learned her name several days after he watched a full-blooded god carry Orkney's King to his chambers – sometimes looked at him like she had questions that were eating her from the inside. Despite this, she did not ask them.

Bertilak had pulled him and Guinevere aside a few days prior and told them he knew they carried the blood of the gods, knew that was where they drew their powers. He explained, too, that it was likely Agrivane's ability to call upon the gods that drew them here.

All three of them had decided to stay. It wasn't Camelot – would never be Camelot – but it was still standing. If they could find Camlann's survivors, this could yet be their base of operations.

They'd agreed Lancelot and Bertilak would hunt the beasts while they looked for people to hunt alongside them and Guinevere would remain at Orkney, her magics more suited to staying in one place.

They had devised a way for her to recall them: a necklace for each of them made of clay, a drop of her blood in the center of the pendant. In what had become her chambers at Orkney, she had constructed a small device that she could put a fresh drop of blood into and their pendants would vibrate. Subtle but, so long as the pendants stayed in contact with their flesh, very effective.

Laurel had spent her days in the throne room, acting as Queen and King both to the people who sought audience with their sovereigns. She spent the nights at Agrivane's side. Lancelot was not convinced she slept.

Agrivane had, clearly, not intended to be a King proper. The members of the court that still came to the throne room had been his father's. He had no Champion, no smaller court of confidants to root out any potential troubles within his court.

_Not that it did Arthur much good in the end,_ Lancelot thought on more occasions than he cared to admit.

Report of Camelot's destruction had come to Orkney, stories of smoke too dark to be natural and fire and, to Lancelot's sorrow, more dragons.

There would be no going home. Not for him.

–

Kay and Bedivere had been living in thee ruins of Camelot for near two months. Kay was exhausted, hungry, and running out of reasons to stay.

It had been his idea – dig out Camelot's library and see if they could find anything that might help them seal the riven earth and end this plague of, as Bedivere had come to call them, _critters._ After weeks of alternating between digging out the rubble and hunting for food to sustain them, he was losing hope they would ever reach the library.

“Just one more month,” Bedivere had told him, “We've moved so much and we're almost there.”

Kay had argued against it, the fear that they'd be one piece of rubble away only to have that piece be more than they could lift. Bedivere hadn't relented, did not want the not knowing if they _could have_ to follow them for the rest of his life.

And, really, Kay couldn't argue.

“Fine,” Kay relented, “but if we we get in the library I'm also digging out the kitchen's stoves so we can smoke something bigger than a hare.”

Bedivere had laughed at that and agreed. Kay let himself get lost in his smile and, despite what they were up against, fell a little more in love with the man.

–

It had taken near half a year before Agrivane could walk from his chambers to the throne room on his own. He had insisted on returning to his duties well before that; Laurel rose early in the mornings to help him walk without the guards prying and helped him again once they were sure there would be no one at the gates needing their decree until morning.

They spent a large part of their evenings in the main dining hall with Guinevere. Once Agrivane had shaken most of his fears over her murdering him as revenge for her husband's death, he let himself admit she had a sharp mind and knew how to run a Kingdom.

Plus, Laurel seemed to like her company, and who was he to deny his wife something like a friend?

–

The easy rhythm of slaughtering the beasts that seemed to both plague towns and avoid people – too smart to be mindless – and getting paid for it had settled into Bors' soul not long after he found himself wielding earth magic.

He'd heard of others able to wield magic after the earth had split open, loosed the monsters on an ill-prepared world. He'd even seen a few people and their magics in action. None of them seemed to do so effortlessly; Bors had a policy of spending as little time around other people as possible.

If someone saw what he was capable of, there was no way to know who might try to recruit him for their own purposes, no telling what they might do to control a power that wasn't theirs.

Sometimes, almost exclusively when someone who struggled to keep their family fed and clothed offered him coin to rid their land of the monsters, he refused the coin. Something about taking from those who had less than him, even if they saw it as a fair trade – their money for him swinging his sword and not missing – seemed _wrong._

He knew there were others – Hunters, most people called them – who saw payment as their due and only Hunted when the money was paid at least in part in advance. Some took the money and left; the thought of that made Bors' stomach churn.

As a Knight, he had sworn to protect the people. As a Hunter, he would carry his Knight's oath forward.

He traded his axe for a sword, left the role of executioner with the axe and kept his eyes on the path he still had left to walk.

–

Lancelot could not have said when Caradoc and Palamedes had joined him as a Hunter who called Orkney their base of operations. Perhaps it was months ago, perhaps only a small handful of days. Time itself seemed to have left him alone, gave him space to redefine himself as someone who no longer had a King to Champion. Perhaps he had been on his Hunt too long to remember what it was like to adjust to this place that would never be his home.

Palamedes seemed loyal to Guinevere, not Agrivane, but Agrivane seemed to take no issue with that. As Guinevere's Hunter, Palamedes had become ruthless, unyielding regardless of what he faced. As far as Lancelot could tell, Palamedes had no magic of his own, new or inborn. 

This did not hinder the Knight-turned-Hunter; Palamedes found no target too far for travel, no beast too daunting to face.

At least, now that the dragons had seemed to have disappeared altogether.

Caradoc, on the other hand, seemed to pledge himself to the Hunt itself. Lancelot knew Caradoc was a King in his own right. He wondered, sometimes, if whatever lands Caradoc was meant to rule had been destroyed, his long-term regent killed in the onslaught, 

Lancelot did not ask.

They stood alongside Bertilak, staring at Agrivane and Laurel on their thrones with Guinevere standing just barely behind Laurel. It had been Guinevere who had summoned them there, but this _was_ the throne room.

While they waited for whatever it was they had been pulled from their Hunts for, it had to be more than simply _important._

In the silence, Lancelot found himself glad they stood with him, and he with them.

–

Dagonet had no idea how long it had been since two of Camelot's finest – perhaps the only other survivors – had sent him to evacuate nearby towns.

He'd hit the first town and started yelling, had expected a resistance. This was all most people had, their towns, their homes. Why would a blood-splattered stranger and his screaming move anyone to action?

And yet, they'd grabbed as much as they could carry and left. People helped others, shared pack horses and moved as a unit to clear their town and head somewhere not in what Dagonet feared was the monsters' warpath.

It wasn't until the fourth town that did the same thing that he realized it might not just be how loud he was.

He let them forage their own path to safety and went to seek one of the monsters himself.

When he found one, it looked at him like he would make a decent meal.

“No,” Dagonet spoke to the creature like he did the villagers, “Not another step.”

The monster froze and then struggled as if roped to something by all four legs, the ropes pulled tight.

Dagonet tilted his head, curious, the fear he expected over coming face-to-face with one of these things alone not manifesting.

“I need you to die,” he said with the same amount of conviction.

It did.

Dagonet shivered. This was not something he could do before – not as a Knight and not as a Fool – and it horrified him.

He swore he would never use this magic to kill something again. Not directly, not like that.

He'd grapple with his feelings over tethering beasts for an easier kill later.

First, he had to grapple with the fact he'd stripped four towns worth of people of their choice. Even if it was for their own safety, it still should have been their choice.

He did not know how long he'd spent wandering from town to town trying to shake the shame of it from his soul in ways he knew would offer no such solace.

It was winter when he came face-to-face with another beast.

Seven this time, a pack that looked like hound if you squinted but mostly looked hungry. The snow was a bit over ankle-deep for Dagonet, but it melted where the beasts' paws came into contact with the ground.

With a sword in one hand and a near-empty wineskin in the other, Dagonet stood between the pack and a young family.

One of the children began to cry.

“Not on my watch,” Dagonet slurred, “Go,” he told the family, “leave them to me.”

Despite not using his magic, on them, he heard the telltale crunching of snow under hurried feet going the opposite direction of the monsters.

Sensing a chase, the pack began to move as one.

“No,” Dagonet commanded.

Tethered to the ground by things that could not be seen, they began to cry as one.

Dagonet dropped the wineskin and drew his sword like he meant it.

“Never again,” Dagonet promised himself as he lunged at the first beast.

–

Bedivere spent days sobbing as he tried to extract Kay's body from under the ice dragon.

It should have been him.

He never should have lost his temper, never should have been alone in such a dangerous, unpredictable world.

_Kay wouldn't want you to die so senselessly,_ he told himself. He was exhausted, he needed food, water, sleep. 

He needed Kay.

He'd lost Kay because of his own stubborn pride.

He used the rest of his strength to cover what of Kay's body was not under the dragon corpse with rocks before collapsing into a forced sleep.

When he awoke, he decided that he would spend the rest of his life hunting down every last critter even remotely related to the ice dragon.

He slept enough to feel strong enough to walk for days and gathered food and water to ensure he did not have to rely on the forests entirely for sustenance.

Once he'd walked far enough that he could no longer look back and see Camelot, he looked to the horizon in front of him. Where once it had been excitement that accompanied looking to the unknown, now there was little but fury.

“It's critter time,” he warned the universe.


End file.
